This invention relates to a dental tool, and more particularly to a dental tool adapted to deliver two fluid streams to teeth of a patient.
An air-water syringe is a type of dental tool used by dentists and dental technicians for cleaning debris from a patient's teeth and mouth during a dental procedure. The teeth and mouth are cleaned by the spraying of a water stream, or an air stream, or a mixed air-water stream from the syringe. A typical air-water syringe has a hand-piece and a nozzle releasably attached to the hand-piece. The nozzle is retained in the hand-piece by a retaining collar, attached to a threaded stem in the hand-piece, which compresses an O-ring into a groove on the nozzle. Between uses of the syringe, the nozzle must be removed from the hand-piece and sterilized or be replaced with a sterile nozzle.
Problems encountered with such a syringe are the difficulty in readily removing the nozzle from the hand-piece, cleaning the nozzle and sterilizing it. The retaining collar must be unscrewed from the stem, often requiring a wrench to free the nozzle. Frequently, the stem is frozen against the collar and unscrews from the hand-piece when the collar is turned. Additionally, cleaning and sterilizing such a nozzle is time consuming. Other problems encountered with such a syringe is that the nozzle rotates around its longitudinal axis during use and the air and water streams cannot be mixed prior to entering the nozzle.